Ashes of Victory
by ncfan
Summary: -Gin x Rangiku- You're never more alive than when you're dying.


**Characters**: Rangiku, Gin**  
Summary**: You're never more alive than when you're dying.**  
Pairings**: GinRan**  
Warnings/Spoilers**: spoilers for Deicide arc**  
Timeline**: post-Deicide arc**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own Bleach.

* * *

This is the scene that plays out before her very eyes, the scene everyone's been waiting for for months but she's been dreading for the exact same amount of time. Rangiku finds irony in the whole parallel and opposite nature of this, that as others grow ecstatic with joy she drops down to nadirs that, even in her previous darkest moments she didn't think possible.

Seireitei is blanketed in a glittering shroud of frost—not quite snow, but close enough that it crunches the same way under her feet, as Rangiku shivers her way back to her dark quarters, alone, as she has been for months and, as she suspects, she always will be now.

For Rangiku, there's nothing to celebrate. Nothing at all.

She has, of course, played everything out in her mind before. A few, perhaps a dozen, perhaps a hundred, perhaps a thousand times. Funny, how none of it could prepare her for the actual truth, but Rangiku's never been much of a planner for anything except how to evade Hollows, so she supposes she should have expected this.

_Why does love still live after death?_ There are some, Rangiku knows, who would understand why she asks that question. Byakuya, for one, and even though Rangiku knows there are others who ask themselves the same thing, theirs is a silent society and she is an outcast even among them.

She will always, always remain silent, even if every word she doesn't say is written on her face. Rangiku has too much pride to become the object of ridicule the way Hinamori and Kira have (_never to their faces, always behind their backs_), won't give others the satisfaction of dissolving under whatever weight of grief and vestigial grief still exerts itself, just to become a spectacle the way others have in the past.

Gin wouldn't want that. That much, when Rangiku isn't sure if anything she ever knew about him was the truth, she can be sure of.

None of this means it doesn't hurt. It just means she won't be evincing pain beyond dull-eyed listlessness any time soon.

Rangiku isn't holding a cup of sake close to her heart tonight, isn't trying to seek oblivion deep in the searing depths of a glass. There will be plenty of time to try desperately to forget later, has already been plenty of time for that.

Tonight is for remembrance.

Tonight is for regret.

Tonight is for whatever feeling Rangiku has left in her hollow shell, and tonight, above all else, is for the registering of the final absence of Ichimaru Gin in her life, dead and gone, not coming back even as a prisoner, as Rangiku tried to hope he might.

Better prisoner than dead man.

But dead he is, and Rangiku can imagine that… No wait, she can't. She can't ever know if this is what Gin planned or not because she supposes now that she never really knew him, if she couldn't have known that he was capable of this.

Rangiku frowns, a small, bitter, pensive thing, musing. She never _knew_ Gin. But she had loved him. Shouldn't that have been enough?

But no. It never was, never has been, never will be.

A few raucous cheers sound outside and Rangiku closes her eyes tight as though warding off a headache, but in reality, she's just fighting off pain, pain, vivid, excruciating, merciless pain. Pain that won't go away. Pain that won't let up. Pain that will never leave, not entirely.

The victory of others, the outcome so many others prayed for, just means more pain, more loss and more loneliness for her.

_You'll have to get over it,_ Rangiku tells herself viciously. _You'll just have to get over it. There's no more use crying tears for Gin. He's dead; he's not coming back, and even if he did he'd be in a rough spot, all things considered. He abandoned you at the drop of a hat. Is he even worth caring about?_

But Rangiku knows, knows in every fiber in her body that Gin was worth caring about. Worth loving. Even if he did leave her, first in betrayal and then in death, without ever giving even a word of explanation.

_I deserved that much. Even if he was going to leave, he should have at least told me why. Didn't I deserve that much, Gin?_

'_He's dead'_, Rangiku can almost hear Unohana-taicho whispering. _'You said it yourself. Why hold onto anger? The dead can never seek forgiveness. The dead can never set wrongs to right. Why cling to that which hurts you so much?'_

Unohana-taicho can't be blamed for being understanding, but her many centuries of life have, in Rangiku's eyes, failed to give her one very important thing: perspective. Gin has always been a reality of Rangiku's life, nearly as far as she can remember from just days after her entry into Rukongai. Beaten and shaken from stem to stern she wakes up to the sight of pale sunlight shining off of silver hair. A bright smiles flashes as a small hand holds a leathery looking fruit out to her.

She had just seen a kind, if somewhat odd boy then. He'd started to change on that frigid midwinter's night, when he returned, bathed in silver light, wrapping a black woolen shihakusho that fluttered and undulated like a living thing over a thin white kimono and had a smear of blood, scarlet darkened to ebony by the night, on his cheek that he never explained. At first, Rangiku had just thought he had cut himself and was bleeding. But there was no injury.

There had also been no smile on his face, and he began to become unrecognizable from that day forth. A something Rangiku couldn't quite make out.

He never seemed quite so alive anymore.

But, somehow…

This is what brings Rangiku closest to tears, though she never quite breaches the gap.

She remembers. Gin is dying, really dying, starting to drift away on that endless, gently tossing sea.

They make eye contact briefly, Gin's eyes flickering open before closing again, just barely recognizing her.

And in the moments before death, Gin looks more alive at the eyes than he has ever looked since the night locked deep in winter, when he returned to her with a black shihakusho and blood on his cheek.

If only he could have lent her some of his life.


End file.
